TNFD must integrate the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities in its framework

Forest Peoples Programme has written to the Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) setting out necessary and practical suggestions to integrate the rights of indigenous peoples and other customary rights-holders into the framework.  

These suggestions reinforce those being made by the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity (IIFB) and we strongly encourage the TNFD to act on their expert advice. It is the final opportunity for the TNFD to do so ahead of the final version to be published in September 2023.  

Failing to incorporate the human rights of indigenous peoples will demonstrate a failure to take on board and act on the legitimate demands of indigenous people themselves. It will contribute to continued marginalisation and risks increasing their invisibility to companies and financial institutions. It is also likely to contribute to further violations of their human rights. 

Read the letter in full

In brief 

Due to the way in which the TNFD has been conceptualised, designed and developed, the framework cannot fully integrate all the crucially important human rights of indigenous peoples - such as the right to remedy.  

However, the TNFD can integrate elements that would represent at least the very minimum expectation on businesses and financial institutions in regard to their internationally recognised responsibilities to respect and uphold all human rights. It can do this by requiring that businesses and financial institutions identify, address and disclose their impacts on human rights.  

At present the framework only encourages companies and financial institutions to identify, assess, manage and disclose nature-related dependencies, impacts their business has on nature, risks that biodiversity loss poses to their business and opportunities that halting and reversing biodiversity loss would have to their business. Human rights, including those of indigenous peoples, local communities, women and defenders are not adequately addressed, nor integrated into the assessment approach (LEAP) or the suggested disclosures. 

In the current version of the TNFD framework, companies and financial institutions can make their own decisions about what ‘materiality’ means to them, including to decide what their ‘preferred or required’ approach to materiality should be. This is not an acceptable approach. It should instead refer to and require ‘double materiality’ where potential impacts (risks) and actual impacts to human rights are as important as potential impacts (risks) and actual impacts to business. 

Longer-term implications 

The TNFD framework has been under scrutiny, not least due to the fact it is a voluntary reporting initiative developed by business and financial institutions but also because it was developed alongside Target 15 in the Kunming – Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. 

In future, States may decide to adopt the TNFD into law as part of their implementation of Target 15. Although mandatory requirements on business and financial institutions to halt and reverse biodiversity loss is welcome, mandatory initiatives must ensure that the responsibility to respect human rights, including of indigenous peoples and other customary rights-holders is also required. According to the internationally agreed Kunming – Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, States should implement the framework by following a human rights-based approach - in line with international human rights laws and standards, including the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – which the TNFD currently does not embody.